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2 Canadians identified in Algerian gas plant attack

The two Canadians killed in the deadly Al Qaeda-linked attack on a remote Algerian gas refinery in mid-January were middle-class 20-somethings from London, Ont., CBC News reported Monday night.

A photo from Jan. 31 shows a part of the burned-out gas plant in Algeria that was the site of a bloody hostage-taking and attack. The attack and four-day siege by two Canadians and other militants left more than three-dozen refinery workers dead.
(Uncredited / The Canadian Press/AP file photo)

The names of the two, who the broadcaster said had been friends since high school, are Xristos Katsiroubas and Ali Medlej. Both are thought to be in their mid-20s.

Unnamed sources told the CBC it was likely the two blew themselves up in a final blast as government troops launched a major assault on Jan. 19 to recapture the plant.

The possibility that Canadians had been involved in the four-day raid, which saw at least 37 expatriate workers killed by the heavily armed Islamist extremists, arose two days later when Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal announced that “a Canadian was among the militants. He was co-ordinating the attack.”

“Our investigation into this matter continues and no further information will be given at this time,” spokesman Sgt. Greg Cox told the Star’s Tonda MacCharles.

CBC’s unnamed sources said Katsiroubas and Medlej came to the attention of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in 2007 when a relative called authorities to say the two were hanging out with the wrong crowd.

CSIS did not, however, have the pair under surveillance when they left Canada last year.

CBC’s sources also indicated two or more friends from the same school attended by Katsiroubas and Medlej travelled overseas with them. Their names and whereabouts are unknown.

In the immediate aftermath of the gas plant raid, survivors were telling reporters that one of the attackers had blond hair and spoke with a North American accent.

Some said Mohamed Lamine Bencheneb, the militants’ ringleader, who was killed in the final assault, had bragged about the fact that one of the militants was from Canada, according to a Wall Street Journal report at the time.

“Look at this man and how Islam has reached Canada,” Bencheneb reportedly told plant employees.

One survivor said he saw the blond Canadian on the phone with negotiators during the hostage-taking, the Journal reported.

The attack at the plant came days after the French military launched land and airstrikes in nearby Mali, attempting to push back Al Qaeda-linked groups.

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